With two of the "High School Hellcats" giving truly horribly grating performances and the third just bland, this piece of melodramatic trash had me remembering the line of Eve Arden in "Mildred Pierce" about Veda where she realizes she now knows why the alligators eat their young. Jana Lund and Susanne Sidney are the #1 and #2 leaders of a group of nasty teenage girls who bully newcomer Yvonne Lime into becoming a part of their gang, that is if she can pass all of their tests. Lime, a seemingly passive type, seems to fall for their promise of a gang to belong to, even though she seems sensitive and bright and comes from a good home. Why she has left her former school is never explained, but she's the Sandy of "Grease" to the "Rizzo" and "Marty" Pink Lady types of Lund and Sidney. At least with the character of the tough Rizzo, you got to see the vulnerabilities or hidden insecurities beneath her gruff exterior, but Lund and Sidney's characters are simply just braggard bullies who are rebels without causes and just nasty for the sake of being nasty. They start the film by bullying their male substitute teacher (in a Home Economics class!) then try to initiate Lime into fitting in with them by getting her to show up to school the next day in slacks, a big no-no for young ladies in 1958. They soon have her shoplifting, going out only with the boys that they approve of (even though Lund and Sidney are rather sadistically butch) and going to a party that results in one of the hellcat's sudden deaths.
The problem with quickly written movies like this is that they never take the time to create real people, just types, and not any type grounded in reality. Lund, who dominates the first part of the film, and Sidney, who dominates the last part, are vile in every single way, and the way they bellow their lines makes the melodramatic acting of the women in prison movies seem subtle in comparison. There is nothing redeeming about either character, and their performances are so ridiculously amateurish that it becomes difficult to even laugh at them. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Lime who is so bland that she barely rates a blip on the acting radar. Don Shelton and Viola Harris, as her troubled parents, only get a few elements written in their characters to explain why Lime would agree to become part of such a vile gang, even though after a scene where Shelton slaps her, he does get to show instant regret. Brett Halsey as the nice boy who dates Lime behind the backs of her vile girlfriends, does a decent job in creating his characterization. But in spite of those few small elements of realism thrown in around all this melodramatic nonsense, this just becomes so aggravatingly unpleasant that it's difficult to even find anything redeeming in it to call it a camp or cult classic. I'll take Ed Wood's "The Violent Years" over this messy Z film any day.
The problem with quickly written movies like this is that they never take the time to create real people, just types, and not any type grounded in reality. Lund, who dominates the first part of the film, and Sidney, who dominates the last part, are vile in every single way, and the way they bellow their lines makes the melodramatic acting of the women in prison movies seem subtle in comparison. There is nothing redeeming about either character, and their performances are so ridiculously amateurish that it becomes difficult to even laugh at them. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Lime who is so bland that she barely rates a blip on the acting radar. Don Shelton and Viola Harris, as her troubled parents, only get a few elements written in their characters to explain why Lime would agree to become part of such a vile gang, even though after a scene where Shelton slaps her, he does get to show instant regret. Brett Halsey as the nice boy who dates Lime behind the backs of her vile girlfriends, does a decent job in creating his characterization. But in spite of those few small elements of realism thrown in around all this melodramatic nonsense, this just becomes so aggravatingly unpleasant that it's difficult to even find anything redeeming in it to call it a camp or cult classic. I'll take Ed Wood's "The Violent Years" over this messy Z film any day.